


Crossed Wires

by releasetheglitch



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Android!Q, Androids, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, rated E if you're a sentient being of metal and code, rated T or M for everyone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4081615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/releasetheglitch/pseuds/releasetheglitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which James Bond and his robotic boyfriend navigate the perils of captchas, electronic music, and very, very interesting pornography.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know there's already a great AI!Q fic out there (by LivetoDream333, and you should definitely go read it if you haven't already), but I saw [this](http://roboticdreams.tumblr.com/post/99110907377/) post on tumblr, and I just couldn't resist! Hope you all have as much fun with this story as I did :D

It spoke to James Bond’s powers of adaptation that when he saw a pair of glowing green lights hovering above his bed, his first instinct was not to reach for his gun.

“What is it, Q?” he asked sleepily, glancing over at his alarm clock. Five in the morning. Well, at least Q’s timing was getting better. There had been a period of adjustment in the beginning when Q, uncomprehending of the needs of the human body, woke Bond up every half hour to show him a new cat video he’d discovered on the internet. Those had been rough times.

The lights flickered on to reveal a heavily disheveled Q. Despite the early hours, James could not help the dual sensations of lust and affection stirring in his gut as he ran his eyes over the lithe form in front of him. The shockingly vibrant eyes. The unblemished, pale chest. The lines of light that ran down his arms, blinking merrily in sequences too complex for James to understand. He’d stolen one of James’ shirts again, where it drooped off one bony shoulder, far too large for Q’s slender frame.

“I need your help with something,” said Q, bouncing slightly on his feet. It was a new gesture; he must have picked it up from a young child, or a television program, and stored the movement in his Acquisitional Learning patch. James imagined a neatly organized file cabinet, where Q tucked away all of his idiosyncrasies like “play electronic music at 100% volume while James is eating breakfast” and “resist charging batteries like a toddler faced with a bath until batteries drained completely and leaving James to haul his metal arse to the docking station.”

With a groan, James sat up. It was impossible to resist Q, no matter what time of day it was. “What is it?”

“I was just browsing through the astonishing collection of knowledge humanity has gathered, as I do.”

“As you do,” agreed James, stumbling regretfully out of his nice, warm bed. Not for the first time, he wished he could persuade Q to get into bed with him and _stay_ there for the night, instead of pottering over whatever new toy caught his eye.

“Yes,” said Q, solemnly. “But I was faced with quite a considerable obstacle, and, well, you’ll understand once you look at this.”

James stared at the bright computer screen, filled with a string of incomprehensible letters. Then back at Q.

“Q, you sealed up all of MI6’s root code vulnerabilities within hours. I’m pretty sure you can enter a captcha without my help.”

Q shook his head earnestly, pointing to small letters on the screen. “No. _Look._ ”

James leaned closer and squinted. Helpfully, Q zoomed in on the screen by 200%, giving him a view of markedly larger, if slightly blurry words.

“Not an old man yet,” James grumbled, albeit without heat. He returned his attention to the screen. “Please enter the letters you see to prove that you are human? Love, I still don’t understand.”

“I’m not human!” Q cried, and for a moment James was afraid that he was entering some sort of robot existentialist crisis. A load of help he could provide in that situation; his proven form of self-medication was vodka, and he was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to feed a robot alcoholic drinks.

But Q continued. “I can’t very well _lie_ to the poor machine. It’s just trying to do its job and screen out the nasty spambots. No, I need you to enter this captcha for me so this little dear won’t have have to face the bitter sting of failure.”

“Oh my god,” said James, trying extremely hard to smother his grin. “Oh my god. Q. That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard.”

Q’s glare reminded James that he was, in fact, installed with lasers, and most likely wouldn’t be afraid to use them if sufficiently provoked. “Excuse me, agent double-oh seven commander James Bond C.M.G., R.N. 796f7520696e73656e736974—”

“Shh, shh, calm down, love,” smiled James, running his fingers across the nape of Q’s neck, where several of his input ports were hidden and where he secretly loved to be petted. Q tended to ramble in hexadecimal when he got worked up, and James didn’t much fancy being insulted in a language he didn’t understand. “I was just teasing. Of course I’ll help you preserve the innocence and integrity of your tiny friend.”

He was lucky that Q didn’t quite have a grasp on sarcasm yet. As it was, Q still glowered suspiciously, but James kept a straight face and at last Q relented. “Fine. Here you are. Mind you enter it correctly, or it’ll be forced to hunt down a new sequence for you and I don’t want to make its job harder than it already is.”

With a smooth movement, James tugged Q down to sit on his lap. Despite being made of metal and reinforced polymers, Q was astonishingly light. And his synthetic skin was soft and warm against James’ body. Q rolled his eyes but James could hear the engines purring inside him, a sure sign that Q would be blushing if he could.

Q was quite the tactile creature, which may seem surprising at first, but made sense considering the fact that part of his job is to create delicately-calibrated weapons for his agents. James wasn’t sure how human sensations of touch translated to Q’s programming, but his boyfriend was every bit as responsive as any of the humans James had been with, so he didn’t worry about it.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Q said politely, when the captcha had disappeared and a blank video screen replaced it. “You’ve been tremendously helpful, but you can leave now.”

“What is this?” asked James, ignoring him completely. Q seemed oddly flustered, his strings of lights blinking at a quicker speed than usual, not to mention he was attempting to position his body in front of the screen, blocking James’ line of sight.

“Don’t look!” Q yelped, but the video had finished loading and began playing. James moved his flailing limbs out of the way, watching the screen curiously. Q was usually quite happy to show him his discoveries on the web, ranging from videos of cute animals to all the infectious diseases a human could contract. This was apparently something different.

An exposed mess of wires and circuitry appeared on the screen. A moment later, a pair of hands appeared. They pulled at the wires, exposed metallic endings and attached them to the clamps of a machine, doing something that made little sparks fly and Q yelp and cover his eyes with his hands.

James stared. “Is that—?”

Q didn’t answer. The whirring under his skin got louder.

“Are you...watching the equivalent of robot porn?”

Q stared ahead stiffly. “Sequence not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program, or batch file. Please try again.”

James chose his next words carefully, because Q really was beginning to look quite distressed and it wouldn’t do for him to blow a gasket. M would castrate him, and all the little Q-branch minions would be giving him dirty looks until he got shot again. “I’m not judging, Q, I promise. Is this something you’d like to try together?”

Silence. Then Q spoke, in his smallest voice. “It would require a lot of reading on your behalf, and you wouldn’t even get any pleasure out of it. I couldn’t…”

Well. James didn’t want Q’s mind to go down that path. He liked his self-assured, cocky robot free of insecurities. “I like making you happy, Q. You know that.”

Q tilted his head thoughtfully. “The Wikipedia entry on romantic relationships does say that providing your partner with pleasure releases oxytocin, which helps lower blood pressure. That seems beneficial to your wellbeing.”

Okay. Sure. Ignoring the educational interjection, James continued. “Besides, you give me blowjobs, and then you have to clean out your mouth with distilled water afterwards. In comparison, it’s not exactly a hardship for me to move around a couple of your wires.”

Now _that_ got Q worked up. “Excuse me, Bond? ‘Move around’ my wires? Are you really going to be so blasé about the possibility of possibly blowing me up, or corrupting my system files, or—?”

James kissed him then, and Q yelped, shifting around on his lap so their lips met properly. Q didn’t taste like a flesh and blood person would. Instead, his mouth was static electricity that made James feel as if there were stars dancing across his lips and the slightest hint of metallic-blood-sharpness. He kissed with too much enthusiasm and no finesse, pressing against James until the pulse beneath his skin could almost be Q’s own.

He was the best kisser James had ever met.

“Oh! Hang on.” Q pulled away, draping a cover over the computer. “Don’t want the young ones to be corrupted,” he whispered confidentially, petting— _petting_! the machine like a beloved pet. Or a small child. He still wasn’t quite sure what Q’s stance on “inferior” technology was.

With a regretful sigh, James shook his head. “Actually, I think it’s time for breakfast now. Your introduction to the world of pornography took longer than I’d thought. I’ll check out some books on electrical engineering tonight, alright?”

“Brilliant,” Q declared, the first notes of Daft Punk already drifting out of his speakers. “And while you eat, I’ll practice my singing.”

Only the product of years of undercover work kept James from wincing. Q’s enthusiasm for all things human didn’t always translate into skill. Case in point: singing. It might be a bug with Q’s voice box connections, but when he tried to hit the high notes, it came out glitchy and full of static. He was pretty sure that Q was the reason no birds ever landed outside their window in the morning. “Sound great, love,” he said warmly, while frantically attempting to remember where he’d put the earplugs.

All in all, a rather pleasant start to the day. Even when the screech of Q’s cheerful caterwauling started up.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It took longer than he’d expected to pick up the basics of electrical engineering. For one thing, ordinary How-To manuals simply didn’t explain how to manipulate the internal workings of an android so as to give him the best orgasm of his life. But then, James wasn’t the most resourceful agent in Her Majesty’s secret service for nothing. With a week of near-obsessive reading, cursing, and pilfering small electronics, he was more or less ready to make his boyfriend’s wishes come true.

Q was a splash of colour in the monochromatic halls of MI6. Quite a feat, considering the fact that everyone else preferred austere suits in various shades of gray, and Q’s methods of learning in the early days were restricted to imitating members of MI6 personnel. But there was Q, in his light-up trainers (they matched the lights on his torso), mismatched socks, and what was honestly the ugliest neon blue jumper that James had ever had the displeasure of laying his eyes on. James took a moment to watch him work, cables snaking out of his neck and into a large screen, on which projected strings of code he suspected no one else in Q-branch understood.

Under the portrait of efficiency he painted, James noticed his feet shuffling from side to side, making his shoes flash merrily with every step. It was so endearing that he couldn’t resist the urge to sneak up behind the young man—robot, whatever—and place a kiss on the tip of one ear.

Q spun around with a startled yelp. From this proximity, James could see the images on his iris—visual sensors, really, but that’s a technicality—shapes and lines and code, moving at a speed too rapid for him to read. Q got self-conscious about them, sometimes. He could disguise the uncanny glow of his body and auxiliary jacks under layers of clothing, but his not-quite human stare tended to disturb the uninformed.

Thankfully, all the techs adored Q. Thankfully, because James would so hate for Q’s branch floors to be stained with blood.

“Hello,” grinned Q, blissfully unaware of James’ violent musings. The lights under his jumper surged for a moment, and James preened; they only lit up brighter when Q looked at him. “Just give me approximately 3.709 minutes to finish up here, and we can go.”

“Approximately?” James teased.

“Yes. I could give you an estimate that’s exact to the 1000th digit, but by that time I’d be finished, and we would have wasted all that time on trivialities.”

James laughed, wrapping his arms around Q. The position wasn’t comfortable; the cords in Q’s back dug into his stomach and he was heated with the exertion of a particularly high CPU utilization rate. James eyed his arse instead, shrugged, and went for it.

“Ow!”

“No groping while I’m working,” said Q severely, with the faintest wisp of smugness in his tone.

“So you decide to electrocute me?”

To Q-branch’s collective amusement, Q hitched up his shirt. Two panels on his back separated to reveal a set of miniature, yet still intimidating, projectile missiles pointed directly at Bond. “It was a very mild current. You won’t suffer any lasting damage, unless you decide to continue molesting me in public.”

“Point taken,” said James, backing away respectfully. He could accept his loss with grace.

***

As he’d expected, Q reacted to his news with dizzying enthusiasm. But household power surges were already commonplace, and minimizing the physical toll of Q’s excitement was no harder than flipping a breaker switch. It was the emotional aspect that required more tact.

“Shall I play some music, for atmosphere?”

The throaty croons of Leonard Cohen, set inexplicably to upbeat electronic tones began playing before James could protest. Q sang along, wriggling his hips to the beat. “Ohhhh, if you want a partner—”

“How about we just concentrate on each other,” suggested James hurriedly. To his relief, Q accepted that idea as romantic enough to warrant turning off what sounded like the unholy lovechild of Cohen and a fax machine. He flopped heavily onto the bed, kicking his clothes off and lying back with anticipatory glee, no shame for his nakedness.

James undressed with a tad more grace, although he kept his pants on. This night wasn’t about him, after all, and it wouldn’t do for him to get distracted.

“Stretch out on your front,” he instructed. Q did as he was told, propping his head up on a pillow and kicking the heavy blankets at the foot of the bed to the ground. Without his clothes on, it was clearer than ever that Q was not wholly…organic. Every node of his spine was hollow, a port for the numerous cables that were plugged into him daily. There was no protrusion where his ribs should be, no fuzz of hair anywhere that would be covered under clothing.

Then Q pressed into the indent of his navel, and his skin rippled, synthetic covering giving way to metal panels on his shoulder blades that James pried away gently.

“What do you think?” asked Q as he fidgeted, eyes round with apprehension.

James looked. Really looked. The rainbow of wires was pristine, neat lines not unlike veins running down the length of his body and disappearing into his casing. He pushed them aside with gentle fingers and saw a gleaming circuit board, pulsing gently with light every other second. Blue tubules carrying nourishing substances for his synthetic skin were buried deeper down. James left those alone; according to the blueprints, those were extremely sensitive and he didn’t trust himself not to rupture anything. It was hard to reconcile the obviously robotic design with his warm, adoring, brilliant boyfriend, but at the same time, he couldn’t imagine Q looking any other way.

“You look amazing, Q,” he replied with sincerity. “A true technological marvel.”

It was fascinating; when Q beamed, he could clearly see the electrical impulses travelling through his insides, creating a lightshow of joy. “Thank you, James. If I were to cut you open and investigate your organs, I’m sure I would find you a biological masterpiece.”

“I appreciate that,” said James drily.

He located the thick red cable without difficulty. According to Boothroyd’s notes, this was his source of primary motor control. Stimulated, it should hyperpolarize his nerves, and hopefully feel good enough to bring him to orgasm. James tugged at it experimentally, giving its head a slow twist, and the effect was instantaneous, although unexpected. Q collapsed in a heap of giggles.

“Sorry, sorry, give me a ‘mo,” Q gasped out, laughing even harder when he met James’ incredulous gaze. James debated whether he should feel insulted, but Q’s laughter was too adorable for him not to quirk up a wry grin of his own.

“Ticklish?”

Q nodded, mirth dancing in his eyes. “Perhaps turn it up a notch? Imagine getting a feather stuck in your throat. Only instead of your throat, it’s everywhere in your veins.”

“Duly noted.” This time, James forsook gentle for rough. He twisted the wire with a sharp movement of the wrist, simultaneously pulling it out just enough to hear a dull _pop_ in the connection between plug and port.

To his immense gratification, Q’s hips seized, spasming in involuntary jerks as Q gasped and shuddered.

“Wow,” said Q, blinking slowly. “That was rather...overwhelming. Far more intense than I’d anticipated.”

“We’re only getting started,” James promised, kissing his parted lips. “Are you ready for more?”

At Q’s enthusiastic nod, James slid his hands deeper into the forest of Q’s circuitry. He quickly set up a rhythm of pull/twist/kiss skin that drew breathy, wondering sighs from him, the obvious display of pleasure making Bond feel like a god and his cock twitch in his pants.

One of Bond’s favourite things about Q was that he was not a reserved lover. Q had never faced the rejection of a partner telling him to be quiet, or that he was in any way inadequate. As a result, Q expressed his delight openly and enthusiastically, keeping up a constant stream of commentary as James experimented with the innocuous-seeming cable. “Ooh, yes James, that feels nice. A bit faster, and twist it more. This is incredible. I can feel the little cracks of static everywhere, it’s like being massaged from the inside, oh—”

James unplugged the cable. Immediately, Q collapsed limply on the bed, moaning contently. With gentle hands, James circled around the rim of the jack, producing audible cracks as Q tensed and relaxed again, jolting up in jerky movements in time with the movements of James’ hand.

“Jesus,” said James, awed. Judging from Q’s purrs of approval, he suspected that humanity had gotten the short end of the stick in the orgasm department. “Keep talking, love. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“Interference. White hot pops along my spine. I can feel so much, James, it’s incredible. Thank you for doing this.”

“I don’t think I’m doing a good enough job if you’re still speaking in coherent sentences,” James teased. Unbeknownst to Q, while James was pleasuring him with one hand he had been simultaneously seeking out another of Q’s connections. The vocal connection was a blue line that ran from his spine to the base of his throat, and it was this wire that James thumbed innocently as Q made a noise of confusion.

“Unlike humans, I don’t experience much crossing over of separate neural streams in my central processing location. What you’re doing to my body has no bearing on my voi— vuh— vuh—” His voice fizzled out into a crack of static.

It was only for a fraction of a second; James didn’t like the idea of Q being unable to tell him to stop if he needed to. Besides, that fraction was all he needed to create for Q the sensation of speechlessness, of being so overwhelmed by his body that he couldn’t even remember the words to beg for more. He watched with fascination—and no small amount of possessiveness—the slow shudder of Q’s spine as he exhaled, one hand reaching over to squeeze James’ fingers.

Q could probably take a bit more, but this was just about enough for their first foray into the particularities of robot sex. _Just about_ enough. There was one more thing that he wanted to try.

Two months ago, Q had nearly gotten his arm torn off in what he declared “a conflict of opinions with an obstinate paper shredder” and what James called “the worst bloody idea you’ve ever had, Christ Q, I _will_ cancel our electricity plan next time.” MI6 had managed to fix the damaged parts, but there were a few wires with stripped ends from where they had re-soldered loose bits onto the appropriate connections. They had caused James no end of horror at the time, but at least he had something to work with now.

To his delight, he had found a power generator exactly like the one in Q’s video. It was buried in the back of a Q-branch workbench, so he figured no one would miss it. He already cost the branch millions of dollars’ worth of lost equipment when he was in the field; one tiny generator wouldn’t make much of a difference.

"Are you ready for the last step?"

Q's eyes widened comically when he saw the small device in James' hand. "How did you—you stole that—! Oh who cares, do it, James. Now!"

Smirking, James attached the little metal clips to the exposed strips of copper, adjusting the dial to 120 volts. “Brace yourself,” he warned, before flipping the switch on and releasing the deceptively gentle hum of power.

Q screamed, the sound piercing and metallic and utterly inhuman. His lights surged once, overwhelmingly bright, making James squint and avert his eyes before everything shut off, leaving Q a silent, unnaturally still form on the rumpled bed.

Panic surged through James, gut-wrenching and unrestrained. Oh shit. Shit. Had he actually managed to break Q?

But then there was the familiar sound of Q starting up, the soft purr of machinery never as comforting as it was then. James held his breath as Q’s eyes popped open, green glow fading to a subdued tone that indicated that his operating system has finished logging in.

“Are you alright, love? I’m so sorry—“

“That was incredible!” cried Q, leaping out of bed and nearly clocking James in the face with his exuberance. “I feel so recharged. Just _humming_ with energy. I think I can finally figure out what went wrong with that last submarine gun, and I’ve got a brilliant idea for a new AI. Oh, there’s so much to do…”

James sat there, dazed, as Q rushed around starkers, murmuring happily to himself. He was a tornado of movement, generating a miniature electromagnetic storm that sent cascades of bolts and screws and James' reading glasses chasing after him. Within moments, the bedroom was empty, and the worrying sounds of a power saw started up in the next room.

“Whatever happened to post-orgasmic cuddling?” grumbled James, shaking his head and glaring ruefully at his neglected erection.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I know very, very little about robotics. Apologies to anyone out there who actually works in the field :P


End file.
